Though many of you may have children that aren’t quite in school yet, you can still put all of those beautiful school-themed chipboard elements and papers in September’s Main Kit to good use…by building a pre-made mini album for your child’s first year of school!

I put together this 1st Year of School album for my son Caleb, who is currently 2! Now some might call this a little over zealous, but I choose to call it “being prepared!” Something every parent longs to be, but rarely is…lol! So here is a peak at some of my pages and some ideas for creating your very own premade 1s Year if School Album for you little one!

Now every child’s school experience will be different, but here are a few ideas for generic pages to include before hand and then when the time is right you can tailor the album to your child’s specific school experience!

• A My School Page-perfect for a picture of your new academic in front of his school’s flagpole!
• An Introduction Page-Include your child’s name, school name,their grade and their teacher’s name.
• Projects Page- to chronicle your child’s assignments, creations, and projects.
• A Report Card/Grades-to keep track of grades or report cards.
• A Friends/Children at Play-perfect for pictures of friends or fun school photos.
• A Fieldtrips Page- to showcase some of the places your child visited in school.
• A Sports Page- pages for sports team photos and memorabilia.
• An Awards and Certificates Page-to showcase your child’s achievements

Note: The idea of creating a book BEFORE the event is super cool and takes some of the stress out of recording your memories. You could do this for Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas …. Amy used the September Main kit for this project, but you could use anything in your stash.

Here are a few new pages I’ve created.

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September Mini Tutorial

Katie here! If you’re a Crazy Daisy regular, I think you know by now that I love making supplies my own. One of the best ways to do this, I’ve found, is to challenge myself to look at the monthly mini in a new way. This time, I thought, “What haven’t I done before? What would look cute with this album?” Pair those questions with the desire to use a piece of cork board I had laying around, and you get an idea!

To create the two mini cork boards found in my album, follow the steps below:

1. Separate your pages. Order them all by size. For the cork boards, we’ll only be using three medium bracket and three large bracket pages. So: Not the front and back cover, nor the two little bracket pages.
2. Decide what shapes you want your boards to be and draw them in with pencil. One of my cork boards is a thick, rectangular shape, while the other is thin and much smaller. You’ll want to use the heaviest of each set of pages to be the backing of the cork board (the chipboard won’t buckle under the glue and you won’t have problems with pushing thumbtacks completely through). Take one of the two lighter pages of each set and draw rectangles on them. You can either freehand — which is what I did before straightening my edges up with a ruler where I needed to — or you can trace a template. Then, using an X-Acto knife, cut the shapes out so that you are left with two frames. Use the frames as a guide to trace onto the remaining light pages, leaving the heavy pages intact (they’ll only provide backing).

3. Use the center blocks which you cut out with your craft knife as a guide to determine how big the pieces of cork need to be. Tracing around them with a Sharpie works best for this part. Then, cut the cork to size.

4. Adhere the two cardstock frame pages from each set together, and then back them with their respective chipboard pages. Double sided tape works best, but you could also use liquid glue — if you do, make sure to allow the glue to set properly by placing the boards underneath a stack of heavy books; otherwise, they’ll warp.

5. Using strong liquid glue — Elmer’s Craft Bond is awesome, but Aleene’s Tacky Glue would also work very well — adhere the cork in place. The pieces should fit right into their little frames.

6. Seal the edges of the boards by using Mod Podge. This is optional, but I feel it makes things look more cohesive!

7. Next, I decorated my pages by using foam stamps and yellow acrylic paint, stamping words which remind me of fall.

8. Decorate the rest of your pages to follow suit, and there you have it! Your own, customized, spiffy fall mini. Now all you need to is embellish! Have fun.

Though Amy (Kingsford) used the August Main kit for this little tutorial, it applys to every kit. There are so many great ways to spice up your pages with rub-ons and nearly every kit we ship out has some rub-ons in it.

Here’s a few ways Amy used rub-ons to enhance her pages:

1. Use them to dress up your photo clusters.

2. Make your own tags.

3. Create a fun scene on your background paper.

The following tips will help you get a clean transfer with each and every one of your rub-ons:

• Avoid storing your rub-ons in a place that gets extremely hot or cold.
• Use a hard flat surface on which to perform your transfers.
• After performing the transfer use the backing sheet from your rubs to place over top and rub over the image again to seal the image securely.
• When cutting your images from a sheet of rub-ons, leave a small border around the image, to help you determine if the edges of your image are sealed properly.

Have fun with this month’s kit and maybe you can look through old kits to find rub-ons you can repurpose for future projects.

By Katie Turner

Katie here! This time around, I thought I’d do something a little different: offer up some tips and techniques on how to create your own embellishments using the various materials found in the kit (I’m using the July 2010 Main Kit, but you can use whatever you have around your craft space)! 

I like to mix things up and try to challenge myself to use products in a new way and not just straight out of the bag/off the sheet. I realized that while I described the process before, I never really offered up any tutorials, so I’m here to change that today! I’ve created four different tutorials to inspire you to use the goodies in your kit in new ways. Let’s get started!

custom metal charm:

grab your metal charm and the blue flower rub-on from the glitz design kismet collection sheet.
decide how you want to place the petals on your charm; i decided to use two petals and face them away from each other.

cut out the petals and center of the flower (if you want to) and rub it all on! i rubbed on in layers, so i burnished the petals down first, then the brown center, and finally a couple of the red bits on either side of the center. i also covered the charm in a couple coats of mod podge to seal everything in. all done!

textured flower:

cut out the red flower from the glitz design kismet collection sheet and place it on the moxxie joy of baking collection pinch of this paper with the circle side up. rub it on.

trim the paper around the flower (this doesn’t have to be perfect!) and, from corrugated cardboard, cut out a circle slightly larger than the outside of the flower you just cut out. tear one of the top layers of paper off the cardboard circle, the messier the better!

layer the elements, beginning with the corrugated circle on the bottom, the flower in the middle, and a brad from the kit to top it all off. the crop-a-dile is great for punching a circle through the flower and cardboard if you’d prefer to do that before fastening it all together with the brad. voila!
 

collage cards:

take the my mind’s eye life stories collection journaling card and use it as a guide to trace two more cards on the large vintage card also found in the kit; i traced over the lower right and upper left corners of the vintage card so that i’d get the vintage logo and “notes” sentiments on my new cards. cut the cards out.
cut out the bee from the glitz design kismet collection sheet and then cut it in half; place on one card as shown in the picture.

i printed out a very small picture to use on my card, but you could use a piece of patterned paper or keep the area blank to fill with alpha stickers later if you’d like. grab the measuring tape ribbon and pleat it, using the left edge of the card as a guide to help you decide how long the ribbon needs to be/how much of the edge it should cover.

stitch the ribbon on: grab your sheet of glitz design vintage journaling cardstock stickers and cut out the bracket journaling spot with the vintage music sheet motif; i had already used the interior of the journaling spot, so mine was cut out, but you can just cut around the edges of the sticker if you’d prefer. snip a long side of the sticker to use as a border on the top of your card — you’ll need to piece together some of the parts of the sticker to make it seem longer than it really is. see the picture for help!

cut out part of the leaf motif from the glitz design kismet collection floral patterned paper.
quickly cut a strip from the moxxie joy of baking collection pinch of this paper and trim it into random bits; it definitely should not be perfect! layer the bits along the bottom edge of the card and adhere with a light adhesive, then adhere the leaf motif you cut out in the previous step on top of it, just like in the photo.

stitch over the moxxie paper border you created. finished with card one.

for card two, grab the textured flower you created in the last tutorial, as well as another strip of the moxxie paper; this time, keep the strip as is and pleat it.
cut out a couple more motifs from the glitz design paper — i chose another branch with leaves and a couple flowers. layer everything just the way you want it (or use my picture as a guide) and adhere down. again, i used another small photo, but you don’t have to! the space is yours to do whatever you want with.
stitch over the pleats and add a couple more snippets from the glitz design journaling spot with the music sheet design as border accents. now you’ve completed the collage cards!

flower brad:

select a brad from your own stash. i used my i-top to make a medium sized brad which i covered with the glitz design paper, but it’s not necessary as the brad will be covered up. make sure the brad has a bit of an edge, though; if it’s too thin, the next couple of steps won’t work. also, cut out three leaves from the same paper. i chose to use the blue side for this. 
adhere the leaves onto the edge of the brad as shown.

use craft bond or pvc glue to circle the edge of the brad and then tie jute cord around it — the glue will help keep it in place as you work. make sure you’re wrapping the cord over the edges of the leaves; this will hold them in place so they won’t break off. once dry, curl the leaves downward.

cut and distress a very thin strip of the glitz design paper. my strip was about 1 cm x 6 inches — tiny! — and use a ruler or straight edge and bone folder to help you find the middle of the strip and score it.
fold the strip in half. i folded it so that the blue will be what shows when my flower is finished.
crush and twist the strip of paper until it resembles something like in the photo — again, it won’t be perfect, but that’s part of the process and beauty of the completed product!

using more liquid glue, slather the center of the brad and begin to twist the distressed strip into it, working from the outside in and in a vaguely circular motion. make sure you press down hard enough for the glue to hold. once you reach the end of your strip, fold it into the middle of the flower. the end!

i hope you enjoyed these tutorials. please let me and the rest of the crazy daisy team know if you create anything based on the techniques i just shared with you — we’d love to see what you come up with!

Thanks,

Katie

By Kelly Hansen

I’ve always been one to try different techniques on my pages to make them interesting. One of the things I like using is scrapbooking mask by Tim Holtz,and Heidi Swapp. Unfortunately, some people are afraid to try them because they can be expensive.

This month I got creative. Using my Cricut machine (picture above) I cut my very own custom stencil. I cut out the days of the week just the way I wanted them displayed on my layout.

Using the negative space of the stencil, I taped down all 4 sides so It wouldn’t slide around when using my paint. I also glued down the negative space of the letters. Using the paint (you can also use glimmer mist, inks) I painted (picture above) over the days of the week.

This is what the finished product looks like (picture above). Making your own stencil/mask allows you to be creative in so many ways. This was a great way to accent my title without having to use big letters from a alphabet set. Here’s the finished layout:

By Kelly Hansen

Have you noticed the trend of flowers on projects lately? I have, and I’m loving it. When it comes to embellishments I’m always looking for something different, cute, and easy to make. Take a look at this layout made with handmade tissue paper flowers I made. It was so quick and easy!

This is what you’ll need:

- 3 to 4 sheets of white or color tissue paper
- pencil
- scissors

Step 1:

With all sheets together in a stack, free hand the shape and size you would like (photo below). I made 3 different sizes for more dimension.

Step 2: Holding all sheets in hand, cut out your flowers  (photo below).

Step 4: Now layer your flowers. Add button, brad, or any other embellishment to the center of your flower.

** To give your tissue flowers a different look you can ink, glimmer mist or even paint your tissue paper before starting***

 

 

I’m taking another class. This one is called “Love Your Pictures, Love Your Pages.” It’s from Shimelle and you can find the class here. The class is a hybrid of photography and scrapbooking. It focuses on taking better pictures that you’ll love … which means you’ll love your scrapbooking pages more as a result.

Before the class started, we were given a challenge to take a spontaneous photo. We were told to take a photo in the next five minutes. And at that moment, Shelby walked into my room and had a meltdown. So, I took a picture of her meltdown! I’m sure she hated me at the moment, but I am so glad I have this photo. I take all sorts of happy photos, but we aren’t always happy, right?

The class prompt for the second day had us taking pictures of flowers. Here’s my favorite from that prompt. Finding flowers in Arizona can be tough. If I would have had more time and was feeling better (I have an ear infection right now), I would have found a flowering cactus to shoot, which is my absolute favorite desert image.

These photos, like most of them, were taken on my point and shoot or my iPhone (I take a lot of iPhone pictures). I’m getting a fancy camera this month!!! Woo hoo! I can’t wait. I hope when I get the new camera my pictures will be even better.

Save the date mini book

By Grace Tolman

The cute JBS mini book that came in the main kit was adorable to say the least.

The idea of making a “save the date” book out of it was inspired by the Glitz sticker, the number paper and the stars.

Since dates are numbers, I decided to use the number paper to cover my front and back pages. I then used the save the date sticker as my title tag.

In the inside front page, I used some of the Pink Paislee stickers to add birthdays and then cut out a star from the GCD Studios paper.

In the back page I added another journaling sticker and hand wrote a little “note for me”.

This mini came together pretty fast and the best part of this project- it’s small enough that I can tow it in my purse and NEVER, EVER forget a birthday, anniversary or any other special dates ever again. *wink*

Paint is a fun way to bring a bit of contrasting texture and color to your layouts, if your motivated to punch up your layouts then give these few tips a try:

1. Create our own spray mist by just adding water!
Combine some acrylic paint and distilled water in a small misting bottle … shake and spray, for a glimmer try using a metallic paint!

2. Get Edgy and add a fun border to your pages.
For a subtle effect use a dry brush and take long strokes across the edges of your page; For a bolder look try sponging a bit of paint around the edges.

3. Use a stencil or mask for layouts that are paint PERFECT.
Use masking tape to secure your stencil or mask to your surface and then paint over it to create your design.

4. Drop it or dab it on for a controlled messy look!
Using a bit of toilet paper, dip it into your paint then transfer it to your paper by letting it drip or by actually smudging it onto your lo. For more dramatic splatters with the same amount of control, try using an eyedropper.

5. Use paint to create fun backgrounds and mats.
Stroke your paint directly onto your background for a dynamic textured mat.

Looking for more fun ideas for using paint on your layouts…check out all of the painted perfection available for your inspiration from my favorite artsy scrapper: Dina Wakley!